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                                                             Curated classic films

Happy Families

 

My thoughts turn to family at this time of year. In this season of family gatherings, I am reminded of some films where families are a necessary background to the plot. Some of these are genuinely heartwarming. And then there are some -- well, you might want to think twice about spending the holidays with some of the families in the following films.

Joy of Living (1938)

Directed by Tay Garnett

Irene Dunne is a successful star of Broadway musicals (she even gets to display her lovely voice in some Jerome Kern tunes).  Constantly working, her family demands don’t allow for any relaxation.  Enter Douglas Fairbanks, a sea captain, who offers her an escape to the South Seas to experience some joy.  Irene must wrestle with responsibilities to family versus her own needs. With Guy Kibbee Alice Brady, Lucille Ball.

True to Life  (1943)

Directed by George Marshall

Franchot Tone and Dick Powell, radio writers for a show that is losing in the ratings, look for a new angle.  A chance meeting between Powell and Mary Martin leads to Powell moving in with her family and using their daily life as the subject of their radio show.  Things fall apart when Martin, with whom Powell has fallen in love, finds out.

5^th Avenue Girl (1939)

Directed by Gregory La Cava

An unhappy, wealthy businessman, Walter Connolly, and an unemployed young woman, Ginger Rogers, meet in the park and devise a business arrangement where she comes to live with him and poses as his mistress to shake things up among his neglectful family members. And she does, indeed. With Veree Teasdale, James Ellison, Tim Holt, Kathryn Adams.

The Young at Heart (1938)

Directed by Richard Wallace

A family of grifters, Billie Burke and Roland Young, and their son and daughter, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Janet Gaynor, on the run from the law, see opportunity in a train wreck when they rescue an old woman who invites them to live in her mansion. Alas, the woman is cash poor so they decide to work themselves into her will to gain possession of her property.  Meanwhile, they have to earn money and as time passes, they become somewhat successful and with the help of love interests, Paulette Goddard and Richard Carlson, develop a collective conscience.

Bombshell (1933)

Directed by Victor Fleming

Jean Harlow basically plays a parody of herself and the chaotic off-camera life of a Hollywood sex symbol.  Frank Morgan, the head of her dysfunctional family, is also her terrible manager, Lee Tracy plays her outrageous press agent, Franchot Tone and Pat O’Brien are possible suitors. Hilarious, rapid-fire, pre-code dialogue, good performances by all, especially Tracy, but this is Harlow’s film.

You Were Never Lovelier (1942)

Directed by William A. Seiter

In Buenos Aires, Fred Astaire woos suitor-less Rita Hayworth, oldest of four sisters, as a favor to her father, played by Adolphe Menjou, who insists on marrying off daughters in chronological order.  (Sounds a little like The Taming of the Shrew, doesn’t it?) Mistaken identity complications are punctuated by great tunes by Jerome Kern and of course, the dancing.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Teresa Wright is excited when her favorite uncle, played by Joseph Cotten, comes to visit the family, but starts to suspect that he may be the serial, “Merry Widow” killer, and finds herself in danger when her uncle recognizes that she knows.  As with most Hitchcock films, there is great tension that comes when the audience knows the truth before the characters.

Four Daughters (1938)

Directed by Michael Curtiz

The story of Claude Rains, the four daughters he has raised, played by three Lane sisters, Priscilla, Lola, Rosemary, plus Gale Page, and their suitors, in their quiet, cultured family setting until rebel John Garfield, in his first film role, bursts on the scene, in his tough guy pose, and things are never the same.

You Can’t Take it With You (1938)

Directed by Frank Capra

Typical Edward Arnold role of ruthless industrialist and estranged son, James Stewart, who doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t marry Jean Arthur, granddaughter of the anarchistic Lionel Barrymore and daughter of dotty, Spring Byington, and a father, Samuel S. Hinds, who makes fireworks. A very Frank Capra ending with reconciliation and harmonicas.

Meet Me in St Louis (1944)

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

A year in the life of Judy Garland and her family in St. Louis in 1903 awaiting the opening of the World’s Fair commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, when papa, Leon Ames, announces that the firm is transferring him to New York.  Not only will all their social plans and budding romances be ruined, but the family is crestfallen about missing the World’s Fair. Family solidarity saves the day. With Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Margaret O’Brien.

The above are from the golden age. But I also recommend a modern family saga -- Avalon, from 1990, directed by Barry Levinson, the heartfelt story of four generations of an immigrant family in Baltimore.

Oh, and then there’s this family:

The Godfather

(1972) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

 

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Listening Well

      If you're like me, you really appreciate the music in movies, and the many great composers of film scores. So, imagine my surprise when I happened across the American Film Institute's 25 greatest film scores of all time and saw that in their opinion, number one was the John Williams score for Star Wars.  (AFI's 100 YEARS OF FILM SCORE)  Seriously?  I can't help visualizing the age and sex of the average voter. But, besides the limitations in taste of this rating, there is also a limitation of imagination, the imagination to consider the whole 100 years of film and not just the ones that voters had personally experienced in the theater.  It reminds me of sports writers and commentators who anoint the player they are watching as the greatest of all times, without seriously considering the great athletes of the past.

      In fairness, there were some on the list from previous decades of film history, and some modern day composers that are actually among my favorites:  Nino Rota, John Barry, Bernard Herrmann.  In the end, it really is a personal thing -- which music lingers with you and is inseparable from the film in your memory.  So I would remind you of some scores that fit that description in the classic film category and hope that you seek them out, if only to check out the music.

      Meaning no disrespect for John Williams, Max Steiner's music for Gone With the Wind, the number two on the list,  is the more enduring. After eighty years, many people could identify the theme, I believe.  Not so sure that eighty years from now, there will be anyone who recognizes actual music, let alone the Star Wars theme.  

      Max Steiner had an extraordinary career.  He came to Hollywood from Vienna where he was a child prodigy completing his music studies at the age of 16. As a child, he received piano instruction from Johannes Brahms and studied conducting with Gustav Mahler.  He started writing music for films just at the advent of talkies and quickly made a name for himself for developing specific motifs for characters or scenes instead of the generic background melodies that were common with silent films.  His score for King Kong in 1933 changed the way American films were scored. He wrote the music for an astonishing number of films over three decades, Gone With the Wind being one of the most difficult.  

He was nominated for 18 Academy Awards and won 3. The first was for John Ford's The Informer (1935), haunting music which pulsed with the desperation of the main character, played by Victor McLaglen.  

The second was for the 1942 Bette Davis drama, Now Voyager, where a troubled and dominated young woman is transformed by a good wardrobe and a cruise-ship romance.

The third Oscar was for the 1944 film about life on the WWII home front, starring Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple, Since You Went Away.

But, recently I was watching another Bette Davis film, from 1940, one that I think rates among her best, The Letter, directed by William Wyler. I was so aware of the atmospheric effect of the score by Max Steiner that I was inspired to write this post.  The score for The Letter  was one of Steiner's 18 Oscar nominations. (The winner that year was the original score for Pinocchio by Leigh Harline, Paul Smith & Ned Washington, which was pretty good, too.)

       Erich Wolfgang Korngold, another Austro-Hungarian child prodigy,  who conducted his own work at the Hamburg Opera at the age of 23, was invited to score his first Hollywood film in 1935. Not having any desire to return to Austria after it was annexed by Hitler, Korngold stayed in Hollywood and composed an Academy Award winning score for the 1936 epic story of the orphan, Anthony Adverse , starring Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland.

He won again for the well-known, rousing score of The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938, starring Errol Flynn,

followed by another Flynn vehicle, the swashbuckling gem, The Sea Hawk in 1940.

One of his finest compositions and what some have contended is a very obvious inspiration for the above-mentioned John Williams and his theme for Star Wars, is the music he wrote for King's Row in 1942. 

Co-starring Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings, this, in the opinion of many,  also happens to be Ronald Reagan's best film performance.  Take a listen and see what you think. 

But, before the first Academy Award, and before The Sea Hawk, he composed my particular favorite:  the music for Captain Blood in 1935, the original and the best pirate story, naturally starring Errol Flynn, and a nineteen-year old Olivia de Havilland.

       Yet another young musical talent fleeing Hitler's Europe and landing in Hollywood, Franz Waxman, had an early success with The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) in which he introduced some odd and discordant sounds that were thereafter a staple of the horror genre.

He also had a successful artistic collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in two films in the 1940s. In these films, the music is able to switch from romantic themes to ones that alert us to danger. In his music for Rebecca from 1940,

and Suspicion from 1941,
Waxman seems to embellish Hitchcock's expertise with suspense.

By 1954, Hitchcock's style for Rear Window had a more contemporary style, with a more subtle Waxman score, leaving silence at the most nail-biting moments.

Before his work on Rear Window, Waxman had won Academy Awards two years in a row. In 1951, he won for the score for the Billy Wilder film noir, Sunset Boulevard .

For anyone who remembers the final scene where Gloria Swanson is walking down the staircase, the music matches the imaginary 'Salome' that Swanson's character thinks she is filming.

The next year, he won the award for his music for the George Stevens (Academy Award for Best Direction) adaptation of An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser,  A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters.

        One might ask why so many child prodigies born in the first decades of the  twentieth century found their way from Europe to Hollywood. It is not so difficult to understand:  first, being a child prodigy doesn't pay much, and second, the rise of fascism and the very real threat of staying when their homelands are occupied.  

      Consequently, you should not be surprised that another great film composer was -- yes, a child prodigy! Miklos Rozsa obtained a doctorate of music from the Leipzig Conservatory and had his own music performed in Europe in the thirties. While in London, he was hired to score a film, a discipline he claimed to know nothing about, and learned the hard way. Eventually relocating to Hollywood, he had a distinguished career there for four decades.

There are many that are noteworthy, but the score for the  Hitchcock film, Spellbound in 1945, starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, was innovative in his use of the theramin for a dream sequence that is illustrated by Salvador Dali images of a nightmare.

He also collaborated in 1945 with Billy Wilder on the powerful film Lost Weekend. Ray Milland painfully portrays an alcoholic who battles his habit over two days.  He used the theramin again to produce odd sounds that signify the distortion of the alcoholic's state of mind.

Also with Wilder, the great noir classic, Double Indemnity from 1944. The opening theme seems to reflect the doomed path that star, Fred McMurray, is on from the moment he sees co-star, Barbara Stanwyck.

After his success with Ivanhoe (1952), Rozsa was given assignments for scoring other epics, Julius Caesar (1954), 

Ben-Hur (1959),

for which he won the Academy Award, and El Cid (1961).

        Dmitri Tiomkin was born in Kremenchug, Russia to a distinguished family.  His father was a well-known doctor and his mother was a pianist and teacher.  His uncle was a rabbi and the first president of the World Zionist Union.  He studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and as a young man, was part of the artistic crowd in St. Petersburg.  He was friends with Sergei Prokofiev.  He became well-known on the concert stage as a pianist in Europe and New York. In 1929, MGM offered him a five-film contract. 

He then found a productive relationship with Frank Capra, collaborating on four pictures, using innovative sounds for Lost Horizon (1937), for which he received his first Oscar nomination,

and You Can't Take it With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), also nominated for an Oscar, and Meet John Doe (1941). In all, Tiomkin garnered 13 nominations and four wins.

He did two other rather notable scores, one from 1943:  The Hitchcock thriller, Shadow of a Doubt, in which the Merry Widow waltz is  a leitmotif for the menacing uncle, played by Joseph Cotten,

and in 1946, the epic western/soap opera, Duel in the Sun, starring Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck as the bad brother to Joseph Cotten.

His scores for High Noon (1952) and The High and the Mighty (1954) both won Academy Awards, but I admire the score for The Thing From Another World (1951) an influential scifi classic that is given the creepy, alien sounds which established what 'alien' sounds like.

*FYI:  If you are interested in refreshing your memory or are intrigued to hear for yourself, most of the above mentioned soundtracks can be found in whole or in part on You Tube.

Issued in 1999

 

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History from Hollywood 

     As Women's History "Month" draws to a close, it's not too late to take note of some films where historical figures are portrayed by classic film actresses.  Although some of these films take liberties with the real history, for the sake of artistic appeal, I recommend them for the wonderful sets, costumes and makeup that were devoted to portraying accurately these women and their times.

Hollywood was always interested in royalty, and one of the most famous  biopics starred the most famous actress, Greta Garbo.  She plays the Queen of Sweden in the 1933 film, Queen Christina. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian, and co-starring John Gilbert, the film is about the Queen's choice between duty to country and personal happiness.

In 1934, Cecil B. DeMille directed the most unlikely- looking Claudette Colbert in Cleopatra -- seemingly.  But it's amazing what makeup, hairstyles, and costumes can do.  Watch for the opulence of a DeMille spectacle, rather than a history lesson.

Also, from 1934, Marlene Dietrich plays Catherine the Great in The Scarlet Empress, directed by her mentor/collaborator, Josef von Sternberg, in an Expressionist vision that is clearly pre-code. The story of the young and innocent German princess who marries the idiot Czar and then takes over when he is 'deposed' is accurate in that she was German and she did eventually take over.

Royalty was not the only biopic subject released in 1934. Norma Shearer portrayed poet, Elizabeth Barrett, in The Barretts of Wimpole Street.  Directed by Sidney Franklin, the film seems to center more on the tyrannical father, played by Charles Laughton, who forbids his children to marry, than it does on the romance between Elizabeth and Robert Browning. Also starring Maureen O'Sullivan as sister, Henrietta, who also wants to marry.

Barbara Stanwyck stars in the 1935 romanticized account of sharpshooter, Annie Oakley. Directed by George Stevens and co-starring Preston Foster and Melvyn Douglas, the film traces her transformation from farm girl to international celebrity. Mostly fiction, but entertaining.

From 1936, we have Katherine Hepburn as Mary of Scotland. We all know the political and personal rivalry between Mary and her cousin, Elizabeth I, who eventually signs the order for her execution, but this film reveals Mary's struggle for the loyalty of her own Scottish lords and the intrigues of ambitious husbands.  Directed by John Ford, it costars Frederic March and Florence Eldridge.

Queen Elizabeth I was played by Flora Robson in Fire Over England in 1937.  The story of England's rivalry with Spain, while Spain still dominated the seas has a fine cast of players, the most interesting of which are  Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, who fell in love in real life during the making of this film.  Directed by William K. Howard and co-starring James Mason and Raymond Massey.

Norma Shearer portrayed the doomed royal personage in Marie Antoinette from 1938.  Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the film follows her life from her marriage in 1770 to her beheading in sumptuous splendor. Well-acted by Shearer and Robert Morley as the weak and indecisive Louis, and a fine cast of players.

In 1939, Bette Davis took a turn as Elizabeth I in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. This episode in the Queen's life involves her love for the much younger Earl of Essex, played by Errol Flynn. In the end, she sees that his ambition would make him too dangerous to marry.  More legend than history -- there was no romance between them, it is as historically accurate as Warner Bros. costumers, makeup artists, and set designers could  make it. Directed by Michael Curtiz, Davis rivets the attention with her performance, but co-stars Flynn, Olivia DeHavilland, Vincent Price, Alan Hale, and Henry Daniell are all good.

 

Bette Davis portrayed another royal in a film released in the same year.  The role was Carlota, the wife of the Emperor Maximilian, the doomed monarch planted in Mexico after France defeated Spain.  The film is actually called Juarez, after the leader of the Mexican democracy movement, although the film concentrates as much on Maximilian, played by Brian Aherne, and Carlota, as much as Juarez, played by Paul Muni, king of the biopics.

In 1941, we move away from royalty to the story of Edna Gladney, played by Greer Garson in Blossoms in the Dust, directed by Mervyn Leroy.  Gladney devoted her life to removing the unfair stigma from illegitimate orphans, who were discriminated against in adoptions because of the circumstances of their birth. Beautifully acted by Garson and co-stars, Walter Pidgeon, Marsha Hunt and Felix Bressart.

 

 

In 1943, Greer Garson, with her team of co-star Walter Pidgeon and director Mervyn Leroy, told the story of Madame Curie. Actually, the film covers only a short period of her life when she meets Pierre at the Sorbonne, when they work together, trying to isolated radium, and when she becomes the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in science.

In the same year, 1943, Rosalind Russell stars in Flight for Freedom, a somewhat fictionalized account of Amelia Earhart's career and last flight, as a character named Tonie Carter.  Directed by Lothar Mendes and co-starring Fred MacMurray as ace pilot Randy Britton with whom she goes on a special assignment over Japanese-held islands.

Rosalind Russell attempted a more serious biography in 1946 as Sister Kenny, the Australian nurse who had developed a treatment for polio victims, which was met with skepticism and condescension from the medical profession.  The treatment was controversial as to its effectiveness, but it was often rejected because of her lack of status. Directed by Dudley Nichols.

Also from 1946, Devotion, directed by Curtis Berhardt, the story of the Bronte sisters, Emily, played by Ida Lupino, Charlotte, played by Olivia DeHavilland, and Anne, played by Nancy Coleman.  Arthur Kennedy is cast as the tormented brother, Branwell, with Paul Henreid as the love interest. Not particularly accurate history, but well-acted and accompanied by a superb score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Irene Dunne is the English schoolmistress in Anna and King of Siam, the 1946 film directed by John Cromwell. Also starring Rex Harrison as the King, this film is more realistic and a truer account of events than the musical version of 1956.  Additionally, the musical shifts the energy to Yul Brynner, while this film is Anna Leonowen's story, and Ms. Dunne delivers.

Dunne also portrays Queen Victoria in the 1950 film,  The Mudlark.  A homeless boy, played by Andrew Ray, finds his way into the lives of the Queen and Prime Minister, Disraeli, played by Alec Guiness, in this heartstrings-tugging story. Guiness does a great job as the eloquent orator in Parliament and the one who takes an interest in the "mudlark', one of the homeless boys who live on the banks of the Thames.  Directed by Jean Negulesco.